Muslims, Trump, and Metonymy – SE01TR10

June 5, 2017 8:08 am

A metonymy is a word that stands in for another word that it is associated with. But what happens in our current era of shorthand, when a metonymy is used to stand in for the caricatured traits and actions of entire groups of people? Jian explores the way in which words like “Muslims” and “Mexicans” have been used to advance social stereotypes in the Trumpian era. And that, in the end, the word “Trump” may be the metonymy that is undergoing the most severe devolution.